Model-driven engineering of software intensive systems requires adequate means for describing their essential properties. For the domain of testbed automation systems, conventional modeling formalisms fall short due to the inadequacy of a fixed meta-level hierarchy. In this paper we identify the core problems by examining real-world examples. As a solution, we propose using a unification of classes and objects, known as clabjects. We propose extensions to the basic clabject notion for handling connector inheritance and instantiation, which are essential for bridging the gap between theoretical foundations and industrial applications.